Smithson went through the short report three times and never saw the words “angel of death.” Coletti had never included it.

She turned the page, and Father O’Reilly’s mug shot jumped out at her. It was more than just an image. It was a portrait of a man who’d suffered far too much. His eyes looked sad. His mouth appeared to be out of words. His cheeks looked sunken. If there was any faith left in his being, it had been sapped by his arrest.

Smithson turned the page and found forty pictures of the carnage. The bodies were twisted at impossible angles. The floors were smeared with blood and flesh. The sanctuary had been forever desecrated.

After the pictures came the interviews. The bishop issued a statement from the archdiocese pledging cooperation with the investigation. O’Reilly’s family and friends vouched for the priest’s character. Father O’Reilly never confessed and instead proclaimed his innocence while blaming another man for the murders.

The court transcripts painted a clear picture. The fact that the priest was found with the murder weapon and gunpowder residue on his hands, along with the lack of any evidence to support his claims of innocence, had sent him to death row.

Smithson went through a few more cases before she opened the only file that fit.

The incident report described a murder that took place on February 11, 2006. A woman had been shot to death on a kitchen table at a Ukrainian Orthodox church. The man who was arrested for the murder was her ex-boyfriend, a Ukranian immigrant named Aleksey Petrov.

His mug shot was the oddest Smithson had ever seen. He looked neither defiant nor angry. Rather, he looked confused, as if he was trying to understand why he’d been arrested.

The next twenty pictures in the file depicted the crime scene. The victim, Tonya Ivanova, lay in a pool of blood on a table, her arms folded neatly over her wound. Candles encircled the body. Bloody footprints were on the floor.

Coletti had written exhaustive notes in the file jacket. He’d interviewed Petrov’s family members, all of whom insisted that the man was innocent. The detective had interviewed the man’s friends, who swore that Petrov was with them at a bar when his ex-girlfriend died. Coletti had interviewed Tonya Ivanova’s family and friends and had included everyone’s name, contact information, and relationship to the suspect or victim.

A list of dates and times for the twenty disturbances the police had answered at Ivanova’s apartment were included in the file. Petrov had been arrested in connection with half of them, but Ivanova never pressed charges. Two days after his arrest in his ex-girlfriend’s death, Petrov confessed.